Home Of Superheroes, the Supernatural, Swords, Sorcery, and Star Stuff

Monday, 3 July 2017

A Blue Rose Case Worth Investigating...

Cousin Lil & The Blue Rose from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)

Blue Rose to me will always mean the Blue Rose of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole's code name for cases that cannot be explained in words.

However, fellow Tim, +Timothy Brannan has spent considerable time in the last month preparing his three-part review of the new edition of Green Ronin's Blue Rose: The AGE RPG of Romantic Fantasy.

This is an updating and expanding on their original True20 edition of Blue Rose, but now using their new AGE (Adventure Game Engine) mechanics.

I'll be honest, I'm a bit burned out on fantasy at present (barring the usual Game Of Thrones, Ray Harryhausen movies etc), so wasn't really interested in reading about yet another game of elves and pixies in a faux Medieval setting.

But his review caught my eye, particularly with Tim's introduction to the AGE mechanics (which did sound rather cool, even if they did only use d6s; this is probably something I would have filched for our long-running Heroes & Other Worlds game if I'd read it a couple of years ago!)

While clearly capable of handling straight-forward 'fantasy adventures' (à la Dungeons & Dragons), I found the different tone - and emphasis on character - that Blue Rose brings to the game interesting.

These are all things that, as I grow up and as much as I love combat in RPGs, I do think it would be novel to explore and bring to my own games, somehow.

I was also quite intrigued by a passing mention from Tim, when discussing the gamesmastering section, to its suggestions of alternative settings for the game, which apparently alludes to possible John Carter/Barsoom/Mars-style games.

The three parts of Tim's in-depth review, on his great blog, The Other Side, can be found here:

It also has to be said that the game book looks gorgeous, but a print edition (I don't do big PDFs) is £53.99 on Amazon - that's an insane amount to pay for a game (especially one I'll never actually play) unless the author delivers the book in person and runs a session for the Tuesday Knights!

Now, of course, if there was a superhero version of AGE then that might be a different matter...

2 comments:

Have to confess your enthusiasm sent me back to Amazon, where I found a trader I've used many time before selling the book at about 40% off. So I snagged myself a bargain. It's due to arrive late next week ;-) Don't tell Rachel!

In the meantime, I look forward to reading more of your experiments and experiences with the game.